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The price of the Second Amendment

By Dylan Byers

12/17/12 12:18 PM EST

The editors of the conservative National Review respond to calls for increased gun control -- overrepresented, they say, by "the media of the coastal, urban Left" -- with a rather stunningly candid argument:

On Friday, the president promised “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” We doubt that something like this is possible, in a way consistent with the principle and the fact of the Second Amendment. If the possibility of terrors like Newtown are a reminder of why we need politics, their reality is a reminder that politics can do only so much.

Deconstruct that caveat: "We doubt that something like this is possible, in a way consistent with the principle and the fact of the Second Amendment." Or, preventing more tragedies might be possible, but it is not possible unless you repeal the Second Amendment, which you cannot do. Thus, therefore, ergo: The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., is a price that is paid for protection of the Second Amendment.

Now batting for the "coastal, urban Left," Garry Wills, who was hired to the National Review long ago by its founder William F. Buckley, Jr., but later became a staunch advocate for limiting the reach of the Second Amendment. The day after the shooting, as if in anticipation of his alma mater's editorial, he argued that the gun is the American "Moloch":

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture. Ancient Romans justified the destruction of Carthage by noting that children were sacrificed to Moloch there. Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears, Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god.

Of course, some might argue that new laws can also be the subject of idol-worship.